A team of astronomers including McGill Professor Nicolas Cowan has unravelled the enigmatic atmosphere of the exoplanet HAT-P-18 b, shedding light on its intriguing blend of gases, clouds, and even the effects of its star’s activity Exoplanets, planets located beyond our Solar System, captivate both scientists and the public, holding the promise of unveiling diverse planetary systems and potentially habitable worlds. Despite being very much not like our Earth, large gas giant planets found very close to their stars have proven to be ideal test targets for telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to refine astronomers’ methods of understanding exoplanets. One such planet is HAT-P-18 b, a "hot Saturn" type planet located over 500 light-years away with a mass similar to Saturn’s but a size closer to that of the larger Jupiter. This gives the exoplanet a puffed-up atmosphere that is especially ideal for analysis. Led by researchers from the Trottier Institute f
Stellar Contamination and Ghostly Atmospheres: Webb Reveals New Insights Into TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanet focustechnica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from focustechnica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
With the help of instruments designed partly in Canada, a team of Université de Montréal astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water.
Some of these planets have a density that can only be explained if a large fraction of their mass is made up of lighter materials than those that make up the internal structure of the Earth such as water